


Hunger

by magician



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Community: sentinel_thurs, M/M, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-07 12:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8800108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magician/pseuds/magician
Summary: On rare days like this when Jim doesn't have enough to do, the darkness seduces him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Alex's dialogue from Sen Too is sourced from Becky's transcripts. Becky, you are awesome. If you're unfamiliar with the episodes Sen Too, Parts 1&2, this might not make a lot of sense. Originally posted at Sentinel Thursday to the prompt "earth"

On rare days like this when Jim doesn't have enough to do, when Simon's ordered him away because regulations limit how many vacation days he can accumulate, when Blair is out of town at a forensics conference, when there isn't one thing left to clean in the loft, the darkness seduces him.

He pulls up those memories he's ruthlessly shoved away.  The adrenaline of chasing a criminal with imminent death close at hand.  The worry that his friends and colleagues would pay the price for his mistakes.  His humiliation at being so out of control.  Blair, bewildered but still so trusting.  The push-pull dance with Alex.  The time in the temple pool.  
  
Alex described it before descending into madness.  He remembers her words with sentinel clarity: "I'm home.  I can feel the vibrations of the earth itself. I can hear the clouds moving in the sky. I can see the molecules in a drop of water. I want to share this with you."  
  
What he never told Blair was that Jim felt the earth's vibrations, too.  He'd only had the one dose of the hallucinogenic concoction Alex fed him in the pools.  But that didn't stop the doors of perception from opening up, giving him a glimpse of what Alex was striving to find, to be.  
  
Maybe, one day, he'll be able to talk to someone.  He fantasizes about going back to the Chopec, to Incacha's successor, to consult about the drug and his experience. Maybe visit a local tribe and their medicine man.  But he knows these are pipe dreams.  What reason could he give for going?  Besides, the Chopec handed him his hat when they said he was no longer their sentinel.  
  
That leaves Blair.  Blair, who forgave him for all the madness but still carries the wound that hasn't totally healed.  Blair, who watched his best friend, the man he loved, kissing the woman who'd drowned him. The woman who would have shot Blair on that beach with Jim's own gun. It doesn't matter that Jim didn't know Blair loved him back then; the hurt was just as deep even without that extra knife-point of betrayal.  Blair would do his best to research, to help Jim figure things out as he always does.  But Jim can't ask that of Blair.  
  
So today Jim is lying on his back on Mt. Rainier, trying to recapture how the earth's vibrations felt and how the clouds sounded in that warm Sierra Verde jungle. Wishing with an addict's obsession for one more dose to recreate that feeling; knowing with a recovering addict's misery that one more dose--or a hundred--will never provide nirvana.  
  
Then he shoves the memories back into their accustomed compartment, carefully picks he way down the mountain, and goes home to wait for Blair, who arrives from Portland tonight.

 

 


End file.
